Hellobee Boards

I think you need to use common sense on stellar vs. good enough. We live in a good-but-not-the-best school district and I'm fine with it. Looking at the school district we live in independently of anything else, I'm happy with it. The best school district may have more extras but I don't think they are really that important to the quality of education our kid will get. Also the school district we live in is way more diverse. It has 28% minority enrollment vs. >9% at the "best" school. I think there are probably some immeasurable benefits to that.

The move we made in August was specifically made to move into the zone of a good school in our area, bonus if it was walking distance, and it is!

I feel like it's stupid expensive in our area no matter where we were, so we made the school (and I made the walking distance thing) a priority.

For the cost you would be factoring in, I don't know if it would be worth it (or even doable?) I know going up 2-3x the cost wouldn't be doable for us.

Like @Mae: said, common sense is good. Is there any standardization where you have some measure of stellar vs. good enough? It sounds silly, but how active of a parent we are all is also such a big factor, how much *more* would a child of yours be getting from the stellar option versus the good enough?

I love Design Mom's recent posts about her kids' schools in Oakland. I think highly rated schools aren't always better, so you have to know more than just their rating to make the best decision for your kids.

Yes. To me, 100% yes. I grew up living in different areas and had to go to hs at a country school. It was the worst (not that all country schools are bad of course, in fact one district over was amazing)! It is very important to me that LO goes to the best. I was very held back and limited because of my experience.

I feel you though. We have had to make some tough decisions lately about where to move and live and sacrifices have to be made. I wanted the best neighborhood and was able to find something. .. we will possibly never make much or own a home but LO will go to the best school.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Was it celebration?!?! That would be my favorite city to live in ever!

But moving on to the actual question...this has been tough for us, although I'm really not sure how important it is because I LOVED my school which was not at all well-rated and was pretty successful in college after high school. DH hated school, didn't do well, and just went to community college, and he went to what is supposedly the best school in the area. I would still prefer to live in the district he grew up in, but it's just too expensive right now. Then there's the still very good schools, which are in tiny farm towns that I would never in a million years choose to live in. Then there's the okay school in a reasonably-priced city that I like well enough...and that's where we live.

@wonderstruck: no, but it would remind you of it. Seriously, Weston is so Disney-like the light posts all are embellished with "W".

It is extremely important to us. We bought our house 6 years ago and even then (years away from having kids) would not consider something outside the school district that we wanted. However, there is a huge problem in our town in that the school district is really dismal. As an example, I just pulled up GreatSchools.org, and it rated the high schools in our town all 2s and 3s. The high school in the district we moved into (on the north side of the town we live in) is a 10. There are additional issues that have come out in the last few years with fraud and mismanagement of money in the district with the worse schools. While education is extremely important to us, I don't think it would have been so much of a concern if we lived in a town where the schools are all on par with one another. But because of the specifics of the town we live in, we will only live in the area where our kids will go to our preferred school district!

I went to a truly terrible school. There was no choice - it was a very rural area. My parents still emphasized education, probably more so than they would have otherwise. And they put in a lot of effort to make sure we had other opportunities - music lessons, summer camps, chess club, 4H etc.

I was fine not living in the best school district in our town. I knew it was going to be much better than what I had growing up. And really there is so much variation. You can have a terrible teacher in a great school, or vice versa. I plan being the one in charge of my child's education.

@Mrs. Pen: Is is worth it to live on a shoe-string budget for the "best" district? Not likely. Is there a specific reason the other districts aren't good enough or that one district is the best? As a public school teacher, I have to say I don't think those online ratings count for beans. They are based off of test scores and tell the public nearly nothing about a school.

I think looking at teacher salary (something reasonable that hasn't been frozen for years) tells you something about the quality of teacher the district attracts/retains. Going to a public board meeting can give you a general feel of the district overall. It's really hard to tell how "great" a school is until you're a part of it. I'm in our town's "best" district (highly rated in the state too) and don't think we're doing anything ground-breakingly better than our neighborhood school in another district. It's really relative to your families wants & needs.

I will say I worked in the "worst" district for a year. There was a reason it had that reputation and it had nothing to do with the socio-economic status of the families in that area. The board & superintendent were awful, so I would say it's worth it to avoid those types of districts.

One more thing, but, does your area choice? In my town, anyone can enter a choice lottery to go to the district they desire. The districts will bus them in, too. It's all about money: more bodies = more dollars.

For us, the school ranking is important. It does not have to be the absolute best school in the area, but it still has to be good. Not only for the purpose of academics, but because of the student population of those attending those schools. The children who attend better schools are more likely to come from families that have the time and resources to devote to their children's education.

Children grow up copying their peers or wanting to be like their peers. If their peers are doing extracurricular activities and are focused on their studies, there's a higher chance that my children will want to too. It matters to me the types of kids my children are influenced by.

Both DH and I went to below-average schools in rural areas, so it was really the only choice. BUT we both did well in university and beyond because our parents prioritized education and provided us with lots of other learning opportunities.

In my case, I was able to participate in a lot of things that I wouldn't have been able to do in a bigger, "better", school because there was less competition and I believe it made me a more well rounded person. It also allowed me to grow up in a community where everyone knew each other and you really were part of the community- something I miss now that we live in the suburbs.

Also, as one of my friends recently pointed out, it's much harder to excel or stand out at "better" schools. You might want to be the bigger fish in a smaller pond.

School districts were our #1 priority when buying a home. We didn't necessarily need to live in the best district, but we wanted one with good rankings. Growing up we were zoned to really bad public schools so my parents sent us to private school, but private school is just so expensive and they could have put that money towards our college education. Plus the public schools that we are currently zoned to are ranked higher than the private schools I went to. Win-win!

We probably won't ever be able to afford the "best" around here either, as it would mean buying a million dollar+ house, and those towns probably don't even have much in the way of apartments.

What's important to me is that there is a variety of offerings and that the culture of the school is that the kids want to learn.

We live in an area with unaccredited schools. They are not the best. But IMO I grew up with a terrible elementary school (as in, we had to share books and didn't have ac). I think the high school matters the most - if our high school isn't doing better and accredited by the time our oldest is in 6th grade, we'll be moving.

I think there can be a balance between the two. You don't have to be in a district with the best schools but you don't want to be somewhere where the schools are terrible, either. When we were looking for a place to move, one of my criteria was that the school district be in the top 20% in the state. I don't think there's a big difference between the #1 school in a state versus #22 but I think there's a huge difference between #22 and #131.
Just for the record, I'm a public school teacher in a highly rated school in a low income area. We consistently outperform other schools with our socioeconomic status.

Haha I just posted a similar question..

For me, it was very important. I was not willing to consider towns/cities that had public schools that weren't one of the top 10 or so in the state. One of the things about the "better" districts is that the student to teacher ratio was usually smaller too, so that was important also. We definitely paid a price for it and compromised on a less updated house and increasing the budget by 20%.

We live in an area with amazing school districts. Mediocre for this area would be considered top in other areas of the country. But this is why we live here, and living in a top school district is a huge priority for us. We will sacrifice on the type of house to live in a top school district.

So here's the deal for us...the amount we pay in taxes per year in our city with an excellent district, could pay for a good private school if we lived in the city next to us with the difference in lower annual taxes. Our city offers more than great schools so we chose the higher annual taxes but it seems like public and private would even out no matter which we picked if we really crunched numbers.

@JennyD: ITA, thanks for writing this all out!

I am public schooled, and I think I came out fine. I went to college with a lot of privately schooled kids and you know what, they had learning issues too, just as much as some of the kids in my public school.

Private doesn't necessarily mean better in my experience. It can also be the place that parents with problem children dump them because the public schools can't or won't handle them any longer.